Audio Version Of The Blog – 03.31.13

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How Do We Thank The Creator?

Dr. Michael LaitmanQuestion: How can we express our gratitude to the Creator?

Answer: Only by wanting His revelation, by that we bring Him contentment.

These words may sound banal, not fully understood, and artificial, but on the whole, it is the only way to explain it using the language of this world. In fact, it is a very high level and we will begin to understand the meaning of these words only when the Creator is revealed.

How can we bring the Creator, the upper force that manages everything, contentment if we run around like bugs on this planet bumping into one another? Do we want Him or not? Does our mood change according to this? Does He suffer or enjoy as a result (the suffering or pleasure of the Shechina -Divinity)? We don’t understand all this, we don’t even understand ourselves.

In fact, all of humanity are upper creatures, not in the way we see it in our egoistic attributes, but in the way we really exist on the level of the general connection, in full adhesion with the Creator. On that level we are totally equal and identical to Him.

So we have to imagine this level, to act it, and everyone should see himself and his friends as worthy of this level. This should raise us.
[103860]
From the European Convention in Germany 3/23/13, Lesson 3

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Dissemination Is The Elixir Of Life

Dr. Michael LaitmanQuestion: I would like to ask about a situation that can occur in a group regarding the dissemination and teaching of integral education.

Suppose there is a group of five people who have accepted the group charter and are trying to keep it, exhibiting love, etc., and there is me, a solid, educated, clever person who has graduated from courses of integral teaching and integral education and who can already teach others. I don’t have time to be incorporated in the group; I want to disseminate, but the group doesn’t support me. It turns out that they are holding me back. What should we do in such a case?

Answer: The point is that before the general global crisis started I didn’t speak about integral education at all. Baal HaSulam writes a lot about this and talks about this issue very seriously. He emphasizes that the revelation of the Creator cannot occur if the world doesn’t yearn for it, both the part of humanity that has the point in the heart and the part in which the point in the heart has not yet awakened. So everything depends on dissemination. I also saw how in the beginning my students didn’t quite grasp this idea, but I pressured them, and eventually they understand that first of all, we have no choice and that it is essential, and secondly, that it is true.

What would I do in your place? There are many groups around the world and some understand that we must disseminate and some don’t. The same thing happens in each group where there are some people who understand this point and some who don’t. In any case, the members of the group have to live in peace and allow those who want to disseminate and who acknowledge how necessary it is to do so. Those who still don’t understand should wait until they understand; they will see that all the groups are dealing with it and will eventually feel not only that they are interested in it, but also the need to disseminate.

The point is that when you begin to work for the general public, you feel great energy; you feel the meaning of life. It’s like becoming parents, since when we have children, we feel a new urge for life: You don’t live only for yourself anymore but for them. So, a group that deals with dissemination is always more lively. It turns out that first of all dissemination is important for the group itself. Let’s hope that everyone will gradually understand this.
[103569]
From the European Convention in Germany 3/22/13, Lesson 2

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Filling The Emotional Gaps With Light

Dr. Michael LaitmanQuestion: People in whom the point in the heart has been revealed have freewill, while 99% of people feel depressed. It turns out that we are one big family that has a goal in life, and therefore we are happy.

Answer: Of course we are one big family since only one vessel, one desire, was created initially. Then it was shattered to billions of individual desires. So there are seven billion people in the world today. Now we have to reconnect, but this time by our collective efforts. This, of course, happens under the influence of the upper Light, since we can’t do it by ourselves. The Light does everything, but we have to take this whole system through the integral connection, which means to become one unique whole again.

What’s going on here? First, we were one unique whole. Then under the influence of the upper Light, we began to feel egoistically repulsed by one another, and our vessel was shattered.

Filling The Emotional Gaps With Light

This means that the Light has inserted its opposite attribute into us, and now there are gaps between us, emotional distances: I can’t stand the other and he and I can’t live together, why? It’s because the Light has inserted an ego in us, the resistance between us, the darkness.

If we annul this opposite attribute now, by demanding that the Light influence us, then it will illuminate for us again, but according to our desire to rise above the ego now. So it turns out that if before the Light illuminated us on the level of the Light of Nefesh, which is a very faint Light, now it illuminates on the level of the Light of Yechida for us, which is a great eternal Light.

This is all our gain. In other words, the repulsion that we feel, all the gaps and the spaces between us, have to be filled with the Light.
[103561]
From the European Convention in Germany 3/22/13, Lesson 2

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How To Unite The Continent?

Dr. Michael LaitmanHundreds of years ago the Kabbalists already spoke about the general impending crisis of humanity that is appearing today in Europe in a particularly acute form. At the beginning of the 20th century Baal Hasulam wrote that at the end of the century, more precisely from the year 1995, a completely new stage would begin, a real stage in the development of humanity. Basically, this period was even born in those days, but it always takes time until a process reaches its realization among the masses of people.

On the other hand, these changes are similar to those changes that take place in a group. And so from the organization of small groups, we can learn what will happen in large blocks like these, like that of the entire European continent.

From the learning material, we know that the moment that people strive to unite, they immediately discover a new level of egoism. Why does this happen? Because when we are found in some stage of development and need to rise to the next level, we can do this only if we overcome our ego.

The next level of development is a greater connection between people. If we connect between us, suppose with the power of 10 kilograms, and then in continuation, suppose, we need to be connected with the power of 100 kilograms. So how is it possible for us to be connected between us with an intensity like this to organize a stronger and more consolidated society in which the upper Light, the force that acts upon us and influences us externally (the Surrounding Light), will be revealed?

For this we need to become egoists between us on our present level, so that all of this ego will be found among us. Then in opposition to it, we will connect with each other, which is to say that we will make a screen above us, so that all of the Light that reaches us will not enter each of us in an egoistic form, but will remain outside, above us, in the form of a community, in the form of a covenant. And then we will feel the collective Light with a collective desire that will connect us. This will be our first spiritual Light, which we call by the name “Nefesh” (“the Light of Nefesh”).

How To Unite The Continent?
The ego rends and pushes us from within, but in opposition to that, specifically working above it, we compel ourselves to connect. Even though we are all egoists, in spite of this, we unite.

Our unified state is composed of two opposing forces: the egoistic force that separates us causing repulsion, hatred, lack of understanding; and above this, we rise to connection between us.

How To Unite The Continent?
When these two opposing forces, the negative force on the one hand and the positive force on the other hand, reach a particular tension between them, then in one moment, in the form of a leap, the upper force, the Light, is revealed there. It gives us a feeling of cooperation, a feeling of connection, and together with this, a feeling of existence in an absolutely different space, in another state, called “the upper world.” We begin to feel ourselves beyond space, beyond time, beyond substance, beyond movement, within a world of the forces that run this material world. We need to go out together to a level like this. To rise to it today is our mission.

In a group we see that at the moment we begin to connect with a general common desire, at that particular moment, we get hit. Suddenly a feeling of separation, cooling off, lack of meaning appears: “We don’t need all this…” Many of our friends leave; others, having survived this process of cooling off and rejection, again awaken afterward and a desire for connection is attained.

Together with you, we need to pass through many stages like these in this ascent. We cannot overcome it and pass through it all at once. Suppose we require 150 stages (just an arbitrary number) until we reach that point in which our potential will equal to the Light of Nefesh.

How To Unite The Continent?
And so we discover within us these two potentials, the negative and the positive; here in this kind of difference between them, the Light is discovered.

This matter is known to us from electronics, from physics, and from other sciences. For example, a lamp comes on when there is enough power for it. If there exists a potential difference (℧), then the Light is revealed, the Light of Nefesh. This is what we must desire in a group.

How To Unite The Continent?
The same thing happens today for the whole continent, and after that it will spread throughout the world.

In Europe, according to a sign from above, in accord with the program of creation, they have begun to unite. Certainly, all the peoples suppose that this will be useful for them from an economic standpoint; otherwise, it would be impossible to attract people to this in any way. We also enter a group because some future fulfillment attracts us towards it. It is also the same thing here: People feel that they can be together, can be stronger, that this will be more worthwhile for them, and so they begin to unite. But in the process of unification, they suddenly discover that there are numerous hidden obstacles and problems. All of Europe is now found in this state.

Naturally, if the peoples of Europe were conscious of what is truly happening to them, that specifically now they need to desire to unite and to connect, they would do what we are trying to do as a group, meaning, in spite of the circumstances, they would strive to unite somehow. Likewise, they already see that they cannot divide and separate from each other.

With the group a slightly different process takes place, we are divided and again connected. New people come, we go, we come and so forth, or we simply leave for a number of days or weeks (a state exists like this), or are even found within it, but as if we are not found, to the point that we descend alone.

But in Europe, the people who manage the financial and economic connections see that this is impossible, that it is impossible to separate further. We see this in the example of Cyprus, and before then, we saw the example of Greece. And this will continue. There is no escape. It will be necessary to transform, to connect more and more.

But problems await them here, because without understanding what needs to be done, this will be a blind search.

And in general, according to the analogy with a group, it is simply necessary to make an effort at mutual incorporation, mutual unification, mutual connection. Then just as in the group, the entire continent would also find a way out, followed by the whole world rising to the level of the upper world. Nothing special is happening here, this is truly a process of consolidation and connection.
[103447]
From the European Convention in Germany 3/22/13, Lesson 1

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“Are Droids Taking Our Jobs?”

Dr. Michael LaitmanOpinion (Andrew McAfee, principal research scientist at the Center for Digital Business at the MIT Sloan School of Management, author of Enterprise 2.0 and Race Against the Machine (with Erik Brynjolfsson): “As it turns out, when tens of millions of people are unemployed or underemployed, there’s a fair amount of interest in what technology might be doing to the labor force. And as I look at the conversation, it strikes me that it’s focused on exactly the right topic, and at the same time, it’s missing the point entirely. The topic that it’s focused on, the question is whether or not all these digital technologies are affecting people’s ability to earn a living, or, to say it a little bit different way, are the droids taking our jobs? And there’s some evidence that they are. …

“Corporate profits are quite high. In fact, if you include bank profits, they’re higher than they’ve ever been. And business investment in gear, in equipment and hardware and software is at an all-time high. So the businesses are getting out their checkbooks. …

“So, in short, yeah, the droids are coming for our jobs. In the short term, we can stimulate job growth by encouraging entrepreneurship and by investing in infrastructure, because the robots today still aren’t very good at fixing bridges. But in the not-too-long-term, I think within the lifetimes of most of the people in this room, we’re going to transition into an economy that is very productive but that just doesn’t need a lot of human workers, and managing that transition is going to be the greatest challenge that our society faces. Voltaire summarized why. He said, ‘Work saves us from three great evils: boredom, vice and need.’”

My Comment: If we exclude people’s revolt against machines and technological progress in general, then the only thing that remains is for us to occupy the unemployed—the most reliable and necessary for this—is integral education in which people begin to understand the essence of the era and of the necessary changes that should occur in them and in society.
[103456]

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Helping Europe To Unite

Helping Europe To UniteQuestion: Essentially, what can we do to specifically help the European groups unite?

Answer: To help with the unification of the European groups we need to be united with them: to connect with them, to push them, to help them, and to participate together with them in their unification. We’re not to stand on the side and watch: “What is happening there in Europe?” but rather to participate in this effort to unify. We need to be aware of what’s going on in all the European groups, to live with them.

We are not just creating a European group at this convention; we are creating the general world group. We need to feel that all of us are one body. Otherwise, we can’t advance. We’ll be in the same state all the time, dispersing and gathering again somewhat, and this will continue for years. We don’t have time for this. We need to unite and work together so much that we’ll see and feel each other as we do now in this convention.

We require one dissemination center for integral education and one management for the entire European group. The center of the world group is found with us. And then we’ll begin to consolidate them all into one united group.
[103678]
From the European Convention in Germany 3/22/13, Lesson 3

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What Are Women Capable Of?

Dr. Michael LaitmanQuestion: Many women from all over Europe came to the convention. Could it be that they don’t push us, men, actively and strongly enough to act?

Answer: You shouldn’t expect others to do your work. Of course, we have to support the women and allow them to pressure the men, but you shouldn’t sit idly and wait: “When will they put pressure on me?” It isn’t the same as it is at home with your wife, where you don’t move unless she “kills” you with her nagging.

Here it’s different; here we do have to concede. They push you to fulfill the goal of life, and you should help them in that and listen to them. But don’t think that it’s only their responsibility; it’s also your concern.

The women’s concern is not only to push the men; they are also busy with their spiritual work. We don’t see, don’t feel it because they do it quietly, a bit submissively. But if we look at their level of knowledge, progress, and loyalty, women are on a level that isn’t any lower than the men’s, and many women are much closer to attainment than most men.

Don’t be misled by the fact that they are seemingly quiet and are thus not that special. They have great knowledge and great powers. If you give them a chance to be a bit more active, you will see of what they are capable.
[103675]
From the European Convention in Germany 3/22/13, Lesson 3

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The Right To Transcend The Boundaries Of Reality

Dr. Michael LaitmanIn all of creation, from the world of Infinity and all the upper worlds, Adam Kadmon, Atzilut, Beria, Yetzira, Assiya, and all the Partzufim and Sefirot until this world, which is the last and the lowest one and includes the whole universe, the still, vegetative, and animate nature, and people on earth, only man has free will. And of all the people it’s only those in whom the question of “what is the meaning of this life?” awakens.

If a person suddenly feels a need to know what he lives for, it means that together with this question the chance to correct his life and to fill it with meaning has appeared. The question itself indicates that there is a certain connection to the source of life. This means that he has a chance to correct his relationship with the source. Today this question awakens in many people, and so we see that depression is widespread.

If we could determine what the lack of communication between us is, what the failure in connection is, we could correct ourselves. We could incorporate the bad system and the good system in us, and we could see which connection is broken and which is intact. But we can’t do that because man was created only with the evil force. I don’t feel anything at all other than the desire to enjoy. I don’t understand anything and can’t think about anything else. This is my inner program.

Everything I look at, everything I see and feel, everything I relate to, all my conscious and subconscious behavior, every day of my life is focused only on one question: “How can I enjoy on the account of every moment and every opportunity.” This is how man is built, and he can’t break this circle.

If I want to do something good for someone else, the reason is my special relations with that person because of which I feel close to him. My good feeling depends on his good feeling. Not only man but also all of the still, vegetative, and animate nature operates according to this principle. We can see this principle everywhere: from the tiniest elementary particles and the waves to gigantic objects and whole galaxies. There is only one desire in everything—to grasp what is good for me and to reject what is harmful.

The egoistic desire to enjoy on the still, vegetative, animate, and speaking levels of nature operates only in this way. But on the speaking level we also receive a special freedom of choice. Man develops from the animate level, from the monkey, and at a certain point he begins to ask: “What am I living for, what is the meaning of life, what is the source of life, does it have a purpose?”

Throughout his evolution, as a result of blows and everything he has been through, man gradually begins to see the general picture. Then the question about the meaning of life forces him to clarify his desire, he has to understand why he lives. Even if his life is fine, the question whether it has a goal and what he can achieve in this life rises.

Some turn to religion and it gives a person a certain hope since it promises that things will be better after his death. But this is not a solution since by that a person doesn’t actually attain the answer to his question. He only calms himself by other people’s stories.

The wisdom of Kabbalah gives a person a real chance to see reality beyond the boundaries of physical death. It says: “You will see your world in your lifetime.” This means that by changing his attitude to reality, a person begins to see the opposite reality that is outside of him. He exits himself to the external world, as if identifying himself with the external world, and thus leaves his body, the animate level, and acquires new senses and new attributes called the human attributes.

A person identifies with and connects to all of nature that is outside of him. Thus he acquires an out-of-body existence, the spiritual life. We have to do it here, in this world, in this life, and then we will transcend to the next reality. After all, we are on the animate level of reality now. In our world there are the still, vegetative, and animate levels of nature, and we belong to the animate level but are more developed than other animals.

We have to move on to the human level, the level of Adam, meaning “similar” (Domeh in Hebrew) to the upper force, the force of love and bestowal. When a person exits himself, he begins to see and feel this different reality. He begins to experience life outside the body, like in a collective matrix existing above matter.

Specifically this kind of existence is called the human level. We attain it by drawing the force of bestowal that exists in nature, adding it to the force of receiving, the force of the ego that we have, and then starting to correct it by changing it to bestowal. Thus we reach the spiritual level.

Today we are in the transition from one level to the other and in the near future we will see how the whole world will have to move on to the next phase of our evolution.
[103360]
From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 3/19/13, Writings of Rabash

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If You Want, You Will Be Heard

Dr. Michael LaitmanQuestion: If we look at ourselves through the eyes of the physical world, we see how weak we are economically, socially, and politically. We lack the required position in the world. Based on this, how can we disseminate something?

Answer: I don’t know what kind of position there should be in the world when someone wants to disseminate something. Go to the Internet and you will see that this is an integral system in which you can do what you want. It was created specifically for dissemination.

Everything depends upon you. If you try to correctly offer your method wholeheartedly, according to what people want to hear from you, they will hear you. It’s up to us only to learn how to do this. No position is required to do this.

In 1995, I opened a web page for Kabbalah and then began to disseminate without asking permission from anyone. I published my first three books in 1983 while I was still with Rabash when I didn’t have any students at all. I regularly appeared on radio programs through which a multitude of people reached us. As of today, we have two television channels and we print newspapers for all the holidays. Therefore no special position is required here.
[103556]
From the European Convention in Germany 3/22/13, Lesson 2

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